The TIMEP Team

Dr. Nancy Okail is the Executive Director of TIMEP, and has more than 15 years of experience working on issues of democracy, rule of law, security and extremism in the Middle East and North Africa region. She analyzes these issues advocates in favor of human rights through her testimony to legislative bodies, providing policy briefings with senior government officials, speaking at public and private events, and writing for academic and popular publications. Prior to joining TIMEP, Dr. Okail was the director of Freedom House’s Egypt program. She has also worked with the Egyptian government as a senior evaluation officer of foreign aid and has also managed programs for several International organizations. Dr. Okail was one of the 43 non-governmental organization workers convicted and sentenced to prison in a widely publicized 2012 case for allegedly using foreign funds to foment unrest in Egypt. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex; her dissertation examined the power relations of foreign aid. You can follow her on Twitter: @NancyGeo.

Ramy Yaacoub

Ramy Yaacoub is the Deputy Director of TIMEP. Prior to joining TIMEP, Mr. Yaacoub served as the chief of staff of the Free Egyptians Party. During his work with the party, he ran two successful parliamentary election campaigns for the Egyptian Bloc Alliance as the Free Egyptians Party’s senior campaign strategist. Mr. Yaacoub holds an M.A. in international affairs with a focus on U.S.-Middle East relations from American University’s School of International Service. He is also currently a pro-bono, elected member of the Free Egyptians Party High Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @RamyYaacoub.

Koert Debeuf

Koert Debeuf is the Director of TIMEP Europe, bringing 20 years of experience in European and Middle East politics. Mr. Debeuf was advisor, speechwriter and spokesperson of the Prime Minister of Belgium, Director of the Belgian think tank Prometheus, and served in the European Parliament as Chief of Staff of the President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). ALDE sent Mr. Debeuf to Cairo in 2011 to observe the Arab Spring, where he lived in from 2011 to 2016, traveling extensively through the Middle East and North Africa. He is a founding member of the pro-European Spinelli Group and of the Arab Leaders for Freedom and Democracy. Mr. Debeuf is the author of Inside the Arab Revolution: Three Years on the Front Line of the Arab Spring, and has had articles published in North American, European, and Arabic newspapers and magazines. Mr. Debeuf holds an M.A. in history from the universities of Leuven and Bologna, and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Oxford University. You can follow him on Twitter: @koertdebeuf

Allison McManus

Ms. Allison McManus is the Research Director at TIMEP. Her work has been published in Jadaliyya (where she serves as a co-editor of the Maghreb page), the National, Foreign Affairs, Lawfare blog, and the Social Movement Studies journal, among others. She recently served as the translator for Copts and the Security State by Laure Guirguis, available through Stanford University Press. She holds an M.A. in Global and International Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara. You can follow her on Twitter: @AllisonLMcManus.

Sara Abdel Rahim

Sara Abdel Rahim is the Development and Projects Director at TIMEP, where she works to support projects, raise funds, and expand partnerships for the institute. Ms. Abdel Rahim was previously a research associate with TIMEP, concentrating on human rights, gender, and sexuality. Prior to joining TIMEP, Ms. Abdel Rahim conducted research in Khartoum on the Sudanese women’s movement and in Cairo on mother’s perceptions of female circumcision. Ms. Abdel Rahim holds an M.A in Near and Middle Eastern studies with a focus on gender in the Middle East from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a B.A. in international studies and anthropology from Johns Hopkins University.

Amr Kotb

Amr Kotb is the Advocacy and External Relations Manager at TIMEP. He has spent the past several years focusing on social and political dynamics within Egypt. Before coming to TIMEP, Kotb worked in Cairo as a freelance journalist and analyst for various international media outlets and as a writer and copy editor for Cairo-based news website Ahram Online. He earned an M.A. in international relations and an M.P.A. from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His writing has appeared in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, the Huffington Post, CNN, Al Jazeera America, and the Atlantic Council, among others. You can follow him on Twitter: @AmrQotb

Jay Roddy

Jay Roddy is the Editorial Manager at TIMEP. He was previously a research associate at TIMEP focusing on religious and ethnic minorities and Egypt’s security institutions, and continues to contribute to the Eshhad and Egypt Security Watch projects. Prior to joining TIMEP, Mr. Roddy spent three years in Egypt as a student, teacher, and translator with a large international non-governmental organization. He holds a B.A. from George Mason University, where he majored in global affairs and Islamic studies. You can follow him on Twitter: @pjroddyjr.

Hannah Paukstis

Hannah Paukstis is the Programs Manager at TIMEP. Prior to joining TIMEP, Ms. Paukstis interned at Human Rights First, the National Security Archive, and the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. She holds a B.A. in international studies from the University of Washington, minoring in human rights.

Jake Greene

Jake Greene is a Senior Research Associate at TIMEP, where he has researched and written on security issues in Egypt and Libya. He received a Master’s in Global Affairs from the American University in Cairo, and his research interests include nonproliferation, geopolitics, and geostrategy. Jake’s commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and other publications, and he has been interviewed by the Associated Press, Mada Masr, and Vocativ. You can follow him on Twitter: @SinaiWonk.

Bradley Youngblood

Brad Youngblood is a Research Associate at TIMEP focusing on elections and political processes. He received an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, where he specialized in political transitions and mainstream Islamist groups. Mr. Youngblood previously worked in data analysis, and has a B.A. in international studies from the University of Oklahoma. You can follow him on Twitter: @BradRYoungblood.

Aliza Asad

Aliza Asad is a Programs Assistant at TIMEP. Prior to joining TIMEP, Ms. Asad interned at the Middle East Institute and lived in Turkey to conduct research on healthcare access for refugees. She holds a B.A. in international studies and public health policy from the University of California, Irvine.

Stanley Gonzalez-Martinez

Stanley Gonzalez-Martinez is the Administrative Assistant at TIMEP. Prior to joining TIMEP, Mr. Gonzalez-Martinez worked for Covington & Burling, RainKing Solutions, and the Moroccan American Center. He holds a B.A. in international affairs from the Elliott School at the George Washington University.

Lindsay Carroll

Lindsay Carroll is the copy editor at TIMEP. An editor who lived and worked in the Middle East from 2010 to 2017, she was a senior copy editor at Egypt Independent, helped set up the news website Mada Masr, and was a senior national news editor at the National in Abu Dhabi. Ms. Carroll graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied political science and English writing, and is pursuing a master’s degree at George Washington University.

Hassan Hassan

Hassan Hassan is a senior fellow at TIMEP focusing on militant Islam, Syria, and Iraq. He was previously an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program in London, a research associate at the Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi, and a deputy opinion editor for the National, the leading English language daily in the Middle East. Working in journalism and research since 2008, Mr. Hassan focuses on Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf States, and he has written extensively on Sunni and Shia movements in the region, including for think-tanks such as the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Chatham House, and the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Hassan is the author, with Michael Weiss, of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, a New York Times bestseller chosen as one of the Times of London’s Best Books of 2015 and the Wall Street Journal’s top ten books on terrorism. He is a weekly columnist for the National and has contributed to the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, among others. He has appeared on flagship television programs, such as the O’Reilly Factor, Amanpour and the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. Mr. Hassan received an M.A. in international relations from the University of Nottingham. You can follow him on Twitter: @hxhassan.

Osama Diab

Osama Diab is a Nonresident Fellow focusing on development and economic issues who is currently completing his Ph.D. in political science with the Middle East and North Africa Research Group at Ghent University in Belgium. Besides his academic research, Mr. Diab is also a researcher, advocate, and campaigner at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), producing analysis of Egypt’s macroeconomic policies on the realization of economic and social rights. Formerly a business reporter, Mr. Diab has developed a passion for longform and investigative journalism, working on a number of projects for the BBC and Mada Masr on issues of financial secrecy. His opinion articles on a wide range of social, economic, and political topics has appeared in a number of international and Egyptian publications including the Guardian, the New Statesman, Jadaliyya, al-Ahram, al-Shorouk, and Mada Masr.

Sherif Azer

Sherif Azer is a Nonresident Fellow focusing on freedoms and human rights. An Egyptian human rights activist and defender, Mr. Azer is the Assistant Secretary-General of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, where he has worked in a number of capacities since 2003. He has also served as the Middle East and North Africa Protection Coordinator of Front Line Defenders, an international organization based in Dublin with the specific aim of protecting human rights defenders, and the MENA Coordinator for the International Network for Freedom of Expression. Mr. Azer is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the Center for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, where his research focuses on the role of Egyptian cyberactivists in vernacularizing human rights. Mr. Azer received his B.A. in political science and an M.A. in international human rights law, both from the American University in Cairo. His thesis studied cyberactivism in Egypt from a human rights and sociological perspective. Mr. Azer has produced a number of publications, including a guide to blogging and a book, Cyberactivism in Egypt: A New Social Movement, published in 2012, reporting on the results of his research.

Mohamed El Dahshan

Mohamed El Dahshan is a development economist and a nonresident fellow with TIMEP. He previously held the position of Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development. Mr. Dahshan regularly writes and lectures on Middle Eastern transitions, economic development and entrepreneurship, and technology. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Competitiveness. In the past, he has consulted for the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank, as well as national governments in the Middle East. In 2011, he received the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalism Award for his coverage and analysis of the Egyptian revolution for traditional and social media. He is the co-author of Diaries of the Revolution, a collective memoir of the revolution, published in Arabic and in Italian. Mr. Dahshan is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Sciences-Po Paris, and Cairo University.

Timothy E. Kaldas

Timothy E. Kaldas is a nonresident fellow at TIMEP focusing on political analysis. His research interests include transitional politics in Egypt, regime survival strategies, and U.S.-Egyptian relations. Beyond Egypt, his research examines the social and political history of sectarianism in Iraq, U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, and discrimination against Muslim Europeans, particularly in France. Mr. Kaldas is a visiting professor at Nile University in Cairo. His commentary and analysis have been featured on CNN, France 24, BBC World, Radio France International, Al Jazeera English, and Mada Masr. He was a contributing photographer for The Road to Tahrir, a photobook documenting the early days of the Egyptian uprising in 2011, and he contributed a chapter to Looming Shadows: Migration and Integration at a Time of Upheaval on the politics and history surrounding discrimination against French Muslim citizens. Mr. Kaldas holds an M.A. in Arab studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. You can follow him on Twitter: @tekaldas.

Mai El-Sadany

Mai El-Sadany is the Non-Resident Fellow for Legal and Judicial Analysis with TIMEP. She has previously worked at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights; the American Civil Liberties Union; Human Rights First; Kohn, Kohn, and Colapinto LLP; and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ms. El-Sadany has been published on legal and constitutional issues in Egypt, sectarian violence in the Middle East, and the split between Sudan and South Sudan. She holds a J.D. and certificate in refugees and humanitarian emergencies from the Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in political science from Stanford University. You can follow her on Twitter:@maitelsadany.

Amira Mikhail

Amira Mikhail is the Nonresident Eshhad Project Fellow with TIMEP. Prior to joining TIMEP, Ms. Mikhail worked with the EgyptSource team at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council and worked as a scholarship coordinator for the MEPI Tomorrow’s Leaders Program at the American University in Cairo. She has been published in the Atlantic Council, OpenDemocracy, and Fikra Forum. Ms. Mikhail is a J.D. candidate at the Washington College of Law at American University with a focus on international human rights law and refugee and asylum law in the Middle East. She focuses on minority rights and international law in Egypt and Middle East. She holds a B.A. in psychology from Covenant College. You can follow her on Twitter:@amiramikhail.

Mohamad Adam

Mohamad Adam is a nonresident fellow with TIMEP and a Cairo-based journalist whose work has been published in The Economist, Mada Masr and Egypt Independent. Mr. Adam studied physics at Cairo University but became engaged in politics at the start of the Egyptian uprising in 2011. He was driven to document the events as they unfolded, and by 2012 he had fallen comfortably into a career of journalism. In 2013, Mr. Adam co-founded Mada Masr, an independent news website, with a group of fellow journalists. He spearheaded the website’s Arabic section, where he wrote, translated, and edited content. Mr. Adam also freelanced for international publications such as The New York Times and provided analysis and reports on current Egyptian affairs for the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, and worked as a local producer on an English documentary for Al Jazeera. In 2014, he joined the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights—a leading Egyptian NGO—as a media officer. Mr. Adam covered topics ranging from Islamist affairs and the health sector to workers’ and human rights. He also authored investigative pieces on police affairs in Egypt for Egypt Independent and Mada Masr. Mr. Adam was a TIMEP-Atlas Corps Bassem Sabry Democracy Fellow in 2015.

Aymen Abderahmen

Aymen Abderahmen is the TIMEP-Atlas Corps Bassem Sabry Democracy Fellow. A native of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, he is the founder of the Tunisian Organization for Peace, the first secretary of the Tunisian watchdog organization iWatch, and the former secretary of Youth-Can. For the past three years, Mr. Abderahmen has worked for the BBC Media Action office in North Africa, overseeing media development projects in the MENA region and working over the past year with the Tunisian Television on developing new youth programs and expanding their social media presence. Mr. Abderahmen earned a B.A. in English language, literature, and civilization from the University of Tunis-El Manar. He is interested in the role of media in the context of democratic transitions, transitional justice as a key factor for peace-building, and youth participation in decision-making.